According to a report from OpenVPN, employees might be the greatest asset of an organization, but they are also the most significant cybersecurity risk.

In spite of an enhanced focus on cybersecurity education, 25 percent of the 500 employees from the US surveyed said that they use the same password for all of their accounts. A whopping 23 percent of US employees said that they often click on links before they verify that the links lead to authentic and safe websites.

Out of the employees who use the same password for every account, 81 percent of them stated that they do not protect their computer and phone with a password at all, as per the report.

“Cybersecurity attacks are a concern of ‘when’ rather than ‘if,’ and companies need to be on their toes to approach attackers head on,” as per a blog post describing the survey conclusions. However, with organizations so concentrated on external threats, they frequently disregard the role their own workers play in revealing vulnerabilities from inside a business.

It is needless to say that using the same passwords for multiple accounts is a risky practice which has the capability to put the entire organization at risk since weak passwords are easier to crack with brute force attacks.

REUSING PASSWORDS IS RISKY

It should go without saying that reusing passwords is a risky behavior that can put an entire company at risk, as weak passwords can be more easily bypassed with brute force attacks. In addition to that, it can also damage the person because if a person uses the same password for bank accounts, social media platforms, and email, then they are not only compromising their work information but also their personal and financial information.

The traditional password protection practices have somewhat changed. For instance, setting up a password using a combination of letters, numbers, uppercase, and lowercase, and special characters is not very useful. Moreover, changing the password every three months is not a very helpful suggestion either, according to Bill Burr, the publisher of past password standards.

Bill Burr said that phrases which are long and easy to remember should be set as passwords. He also suggested that people should only change their passwords if any privacy breach is either suspected or confirmed.

77 PERCENT EMPLOYEES TRUST BIOMETRIC PASSWORDS

The report stated that certain employees are switching to biometric passwords like fingerprints and face recognition to improve security.

Employees have generally welcomed these: More than 75 percent said that they trust biometric identifications, and 62 percent of the surveyed employees said that they think they are more robust than traditional alphanumeric passwords, as per the survey. Nonetheless, at this point, merely 55 percent of employees use biometric system for passwords.

ORGANIZATIONS SHOULD CREATE GOOD CYBER HYGIENE

Businesses can guard their workers by building a cyber hygiene method that inspires employees to think about their choices online proactively, the blog post recorded. Constant security training and transparent communication strategies should be implemented at all companies. Along with that, managers can encourage positive reinforcement when workers make smart choices so that there is less hesitation to report cyber crimes. Rather than employing scare tactics to warn employees about phishing and weak passwords, companies can consider rewarding or recognize people who adopt robust cyber hygiene.

Creating a work environment focused on sound cyber hygiene is time taking but it will ultimately protect organizations against threats in the long run.

If good online habits become the second nature of employees as well as employers, then they will be capable of better-stopping cybercriminals from taking gain of otherwise dormant cyber security culture.